Email marketing is a great way to build a relationship with your market. Building relationships is key to attracting and keeping clients and customers. I am a big proponent of email marketing if used the right way. And I have definitely reaped the benefits of email marketing.
To get started you need an Email Marketing Program, sometimes called a newsletter program or lead capture program or tool. Some popular ones are: Mailchimp, iContact, Constant Contact or Aweber.
Create your Opt-in Offer: People don’t just sign up for newsletters anymore. There is too much competition in the email inbox. You need to offer them something in return for their email. It should be something that will help them in their business or otherwise add value to their lives. It can be a free report, free e-course, free video series, free website templates. You get the idea.
Create your Opt-in form: Add your ‘freebie’ to the backend of your Email Marketing Program or website and then create your opt-in form so that your new subscribers will receive it when they sign up.
Start sending out a periodical newsletter on a consistent basis. You can choose the frequency according to your market. I personally prefer a weekly publication, but bi-weekly or Monthly can also work.
Use your e-Newsletter to inform, educate and update and of course, let your clients know about your regular products and services and any specials you are running.
Structure each e-Newsletter so that it tells a little something about you or what’s going on in your ‘personal’ life. You don’t have to get too personal. It could be information about conferences or seminars you have attended, clients you have worked with, big projects you are currently working on. You just want to get a little ‘intimate’ with your market so that they can get to know you better and most importantly learn to like you and want to do business with you.
Some Email Marketing Don’t’s
Don’t send emails that are not relevant to your market. Stay on topic. It may be tempting to forward information about a furniture sale to a small business marketing information list, but don’t do it. Your subscribers opted in to your email list to hear more about subject matters in your industry. Don’t take advantage of them.
Don’t share your subscriber’s email addresses with third parties. The beauty of using email marketing programs is that subscriber names and email addresses are not revealed in the mailing to other subscribers. As the owner of the list, you have access to that information, but it is not ethical and in some cases, it is illegal to share with third parties.
Overall, email marketing is an effective and economical ‘Stay-in-Touch’ marketing vehicle to build a relationship and communicate with your prospective customers and clients.
Add this to your marketing today if you haven’t already.
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